Sometimes I feel like it would just be easier to go back to the days when you had to write a candidates name on a piece of paper and put it in a box. That would probably take too long to count though.

That's essentially what is happening, JT. The printed vote that you verify gets saved, so that it can be checked "by hand" later if necessary. Otherwise, there is only the assurance that the machine received your input accurately, with no assurance as to what happens with your input later in the chain of sequence. Electronic voting machine manufacturers are against this paper trail citing one of the benefits of e-voting as the lack of waste paper.

The other major concern about e-voting that has been in the news recently is the vulnerability to hacking that, for example, Diebold has been found susceptible to. Many have called for the program code for e-voting systems to be "open" (as in open to public scrutiny rather than obscurity).

Hopefully, we can trust voting machines enough that receipts are unnecessary and recounts are history.

Wow, were so political now. It's great. I think politics is incredibly interesting.

There's actually quite a bit of scandal about who is developing electronic voting machines and where their sympathies lie. The machines are also rather inaccurate, as I understand. How do they know if there is an error that would require them to count the paper ballot?

I'm all for just writing someone's name on a slip of paper, student council style.